Corporate Bitcoin Purchases Surge in Q1 2025, But Price Takes a Hit — What’s Driving the Drop?

Public companies purchased substantially more Bitcoin (BTC) during the first quarter of 2025 than we had previously thought, as they added 91,781 BTC in total to their balance sheets.

Nevertheless, the price of Bitcoin fell quite a bit in this same timeframe, dropping from $94.4K to $82.5K (down 12% in our first look at this Q1 2025 event). Despite my (very) best efforts to find some positive developments in the public company purchasing trend, I just couldn’t do it or see what was in front of me.

Despite the overall trend of corporate Bitcoin accumulation growing, one of the unexpected buyers this past quarter was Tether. Normally recognized for issuing stablecoins, Tether added 8,888 BTC to their reserves in Q1 2025, bringing their total to an astonishing 92,646 BTC. This has been seen as eyebrow-raising, since Tether is not normally considered a direct player in the Bitcoin investment space, rather a stabilizer in the crypto market.

This past quarter, MicroStrategy—far and away the biggest corporate whale in the Bitcoin space—took its commitment to another level. The Tysons Corner, Virginia-based software company, led by Bitcoin bull CEO Michael Saylor, spent a little over $8 billion to purchase a staggering 81,785 additional BTC in this quarter alone. That brings MicroStrategy’s total Bitcoin holdings (which now exceed 140,000 BTC) to 1.5x its market cap and bestows upon it a crown as one of the largest institutional Bitcoin holders on God’s green earth.

Besides Tether and MicroStrategy, other companies have joined the purchasing frenzy. The Blockchain Company acquired 605 BTC; Semler Scientific, 1,108 BTC; and Metaplanet — an investment vehicle linked to high-profile entrepreneur and investor Baldur Bjarnason — 2,285 BTC. These comparatively smaller, but still substantial, purchases are a further indication that tech-driven companies and investment firms are actively diversifying their portfolios to include Bitcoin.

Besides these acquisitions, several firms have made it known that they intend to buy Bitcoin going forward. Marathon Digital, a large Bitcoin mining company, told the world that it plans to make a huge number of Bitcoin purchases and that it is starting a new stock sale to raise $2 billion, which it will use to buy even more Bitcoin. GameStop, the meme-stock retailer, is working up a plan to use $1.3 billion to purchase Bitcoin and to designate the cryptocurrency as a potential part of its future operations.

Considering that public companies acquired almost 92,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2025, it is reasonable to ask why Bitcoin’s price fell instead of rising. The apparent answer is that a combination of market forces, including a great deal of selling by long-term holders and apparent pressure from BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs), was too much for the price to sustain.

One of the main contributors to the price drop is the behavior of long-term holders, who represent a sizable portion of Bitcoin’s market supply. Data indicates that long-term holders sold a staggering 178,000 BTC during Q1 2025, offsetting the corporate purchases. This sell-off from long-term holders likely added substantial sell pressure to the market, effectively counteracting the positive effects of institutional buying.

Alongside the selling pressure coming from long-term holders, Bitcoin ETFs took on significant outflows. In the first quarter, these ETFs lost $4.8 billion, which clearly contributed to the overall downward price pressure. Who exactly pulled this money out of the ETFs? We don’t know exactly, but it was likely some of the same institutional and retail money that had been pouring into Bitcoin ETFs in the first place. These outflows certainly didn’t help the price of Bitcoin during the quarter.

When we look to the future, there are a number of positive and negative forces that will most likely keep pushing and pulling Bitcoin’s price. On the positive side, the corporate buying trend seems likely to continue, with Marathon Digital and GameStop both announcing plans to increase their Bitcoin holdings. Meanwhile, shown by the figures above, institutions appear to be adopting Bitcoin at a faster pace. If anything, the interest among institutions seems to be ramping up further.

Still, the main problem for Bitcoin’s price is attempting to balance the demand from institutions with the amount of pressure to sell coming from holders of the currency who have been in it for the long haul and the amounts being sold by exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track its price. If those kinds of sellers keep selling even when the market seems to be rallying, then the price won’t be able to do what a lot of people want it to do, which is to go up.

The volatility that Bitcoin has presented in Q1 2025 is probably going to continue for a while. For traders and investors, this indicates that even though Bitcoin’s path toward institutional adoption is more certain than ever, the market might still be at risk of wide price swings because of the not-so-secret dynamic between public companies that are buying Bitcoin and long-term holders who are selling it.

To conclude, even though public companies bought up huge amounts of Bitcoin in Q1 2025, the price of Bitcoin declined because long-term holders were selling and the Bitcoin ETFs were experiencing big outflows. So, if you are an institution that is interested in Bitcoin and you are considering adopting it, the next few quarters present a pretty good opportunity to do so, as there seems to be a semi-going-private purchasing push for Bitcoin. That said, the buying demand coming from institutions needs to outpace the selling pressure that these long-term holders are exerting.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.

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